Wednesday, September 25, 2013

In 1961, immediately after overhearing her parents discuss the possibility of Soviet nuclear tests at the North Pole, 8-year-old Michelle Rochon grabbed a pencil and wrote a letter to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in which she asked him to prevent the tests for one particular reason. Her letter, and the reply she soon received from Kennedy, can be read below.

(Source: The Letters of John F. Kennedy, published by Bloomsbury Press on October 29, 2013; Photo above: 8-year-old Michelle holding Kennedy’s letter.)

Dear Mr. Kennedy,

Please stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole because they will kill Santa Claus. I am 8 years old. I am in the third grade at Holy Cross School.

Yours truly,

Michelle Rochon

—————————————

THE WHITE HOUSE

October 28, 1961

Dear Michelle:

I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and risking the life of Santa Claus.

I share your concern about the atmospheric testing of the Soviet Union, not only for the North Pole but for countries throughout the world; not only for Santa Claus but for people throughout the world.

However, you must not worry about Santa Claus. I talked with him yesterday and he is fine. He will be making his rounds again this Christmas.

Monday, September 23, 2013

For those
of you who’ll be studying Chemistry this year (or those who already did), we’d
like you to have a look at this fun video regarding some of the reactions and properties
of Oxygen when exposed to other elements of the periodic table.

Did you
know that Oxygen…

... repels Hellion?

… causes
most metals to rust (e.g. Iron)?

… is often
used as ignition in engines? (and Barium is used in fireworks)

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

If from now on we consider the time we’ll
be occupied on duties like sleeping, eating, drinking, preparing food, working,
travelling, watching television, doing housework, shopping, caring for others,
bathing, grooming, doing community activities, taking classes… how much time do
we have left to do other stuff? And most importantly, what
are we going to do with this time?

Transcript:

These are roughly 28,835 Jelly Beans. I
counted out 500 of them and used those to weigh the rest. In this pile, there
is one Jelly Bean for each day that the average American will live. You might
have more beans in your life, or maybe less, but on average this is the time we
have. Here's a single bean. It's your very first day. A special day, but kind
of a rough day on everyone involved. Add 364 more and you have the first year
of your life. Now for a sense of scale, here are your first fifteen years. 5,475
days, which brings us to the threshold of adulthood. And at that moment this is
the time that we have left. And this is, on average, what we will do with all
that time. We will be asleep for a total 8,477 days. If we're lucky some of the
time will be sleeping next to someone we love. We will be in the process of
eating, drinking, or preparing food for 1,635 days. We will be at work,
hopefully doing something satisfying for the equivalent of 3,202 of those days.
1,099 days will be spent commuting or travelling from one place to another,
maybe a little bit more if you live in LA. On average we will watch television
in one form or another for a total of 2,676 days. House hold activities, like
chores and tending to our pets and shopping will take another 1,576 days. And
we will care for the needs and well being of others, our friends and family,
for 564 days. We will spend 671 days bathing, grooming, and doing all other
bathroom related activities. And another 720 will go to community activities
like religious and civic duties, charities, and taking classes. After we remove
all those beans, this is what remains. This is the time that we have left. Time
for laughing, swimming, making art, going on hikes, text messages, reading,
checking facebook. Playing softball, maybe even teaching yourself how to play
the guitar. So what are you going to do with this time? How much of it do you
think you've already used up? If you only had half of it, what would you do
differently? What about half of that? How much time have you already spent
worrying instead of doing something that you love? What if you just had one
more day? What are you going to do today?

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.

The life of a writer is absolute hell … if he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English.

Follow this link to read what Dahl’s illustrator, Quentin Blake, had to say about his famous writing hut.

Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter. He became one of the world’s best-selling authors. His short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children’s books for their unsentimental, dark humour. His works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches,George’s Marvellous Medicine and The BFG.

In 1989, a 7-year-old girl named Amy sent Roald Dahl a beautiful gift: one of her dreams, contained in a bottle. This letter was his response:

Friday, September 6, 2013

'Atlas' is set to be the first song released from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack, and also marks the first time that Coldplay have ever recorded an original song for a film. The follow-up to 2012's The Hunger Games, meanwhile, will be released in cinemas worldwide on November 22.

“I read because one life isn’t enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I’m just beginning myself, and I wouldn’t mind a map;I read because I have friends who don’t, and young though they are, they’re beginning to run out of material;I read because every journey begins at the library, and it’s time for me to start packing;I read because one of these days I’m going to get out of this town, and I’m going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready.”

—

Richard Peck, Anonymously Yours

No copyright infringement intended. For educational, non-commercial purposes only